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With the front door of Number 10 Downing Street revolving fast as disgruntled ministers become ex-ministers, and Mrs May’s Exit Deal due to be savaged in the House of Commons, it may seem an odd weekend to consider what the effect of Brexit might be for football.
But it’s also true that membership of the EU has utterly changed English and, to a lesser extent, Scottish football. Every team-sheet provides evidence of the EU’s famous or – if you prefer, infamous – commitment to the free movement of labour throughout its member states. On one recent weekend fewer than one in three players who started matches in the Premier League were qualified to play for England. Among the six biggest clubs – Manchester City, Manchester united, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur – the figure was even lower: just over one in five.
English clubs have always fielded players who aren’t English, but they used to come from Scotland, Ireland or Wales. Of course, not all the foreigners who play for English clubs come from other EU countries; they come from Latin America, Africa and Asia too. But there is a significant difference. Footballers from beyond the EU require work permits to play here. EU ones don’t.
It’s not only players whose status will almost certainly be changed when – if? – Brexit becomes a reality. There are very few English managers and coaches in the Premier League – none of the six biggest clubs has an English manager. One assumes that while after Brexit managers already in place may not be affected; recruitment of replacements from EU countries may be more difficult. One can envisage the Home Office asking if X or Y is being recruited for a post which no British citizen is competent to fill.
We mostly recognize that resentment of immigrants and the belief that they were taking English (or British) jobs were among the chief reasons for the Leave campaign’s Referendum win. Curiously, even in towns and cities where there was a handsome majority in favour of Brexit, few seemed concerned that their local football club was full of foreigners – immigrants – taking jobs that might otherwise have gone to English boys. Eastern Europeans who came to do jobs, like fruit-picking, that locals weren’t interested in doing, were resented; but not East European footballers, even though local lads would very happily have taken their place. Very rum.
I suppose it just goes to show that, even if Bill Shankly was wrong in suggesting, even humorously, that football was more important than matters of life and death, it’s undoubtedly more important for millions of people than politics.
With Brexit ending freedom of movement, EU footballers will presumably be in the same position as footballers from other parts of the world. That’s to say they will require work permits. These are not always easily obtained, and not only because the Home Office likes to flex its muscles from time to time. To get one a player requires what is called a Government Body Endorsement from the FA, which will then be forwarded to the Home Office, and there are certain criteria that have to be met for this to be granted. The players must have taken part in a certain proportion of his national team’s competitive matches in the last two years, and a higher percentage is required for players from lower-ranked nations. The FA also has an “Exceptions Panel” which permits some flexibility.
Now it’s probable that if the regulations relating to work permits for non-EU footballers were applied to EU ones after Brexit becomes a reality, the leading Premier League clubs might scarcely be affected since the players they seek to sign would almost all pass the Endorsement test without difficulty. Things would be different for clubs in lower leagues; their targets often being short of international status. At present the ease of movement from EU countries means that there is no test applied, other than that the two clubs and the player and his agent come to an agreement. It might of course be no bad thing if lower league clubs found that the difficulty of getting work permits for players from EU member states made their recruitment more trouble than it was worth. We all know that one of the unpleasant sides of football is the way youngsters are signed, given hope and discarded – often doubtless in favour of more mature imports. Few would complain if Brexit meant that fewer of these young men were thrown on the scrap-heap.
Some of the consequences of Brexit – or at least the prospect of Brexit – have already been felt and may of course prove to be only temporary. The sterling-euro exchange rate currently makes recruitment of EU players more expensive – and top ones will demand even higher salaries as compensation. This is simply how a free market works, and we all know that leading Brexiteers are devout believers in free markets – and damn the consequences for those who suffer from their workings.
Yet the more one thinks of Brexit in relation to football, the more ironies present themselves. There are few areas of life in which we have become more European in the almost fifty years since we joined what was then the European Economic Community. Of course, UEFA – the body that administers European football – is quite distinct from the European Union and existed before the Treaty of Rome was signed. Countries – even non-European ones like Israel and Turkey – belong to UEFA and their clubs play in its competitions. None of this will change.
Football fans are now accustomed to think in European terms and their loyalty is to their club, no matter who manages it or who is playing in its team. One can’t see this changing. Yet, given that Brexit has been driven by an idea of English (rather than British) exceptionalism and resentment of the EU, it is rum that England’s national game has become so very much less English. In David Goodhart’s classification of people as Anywheres and Somewheres, footballers and football managers, adored by their club’s passionate fans, are evidently Anywheres, while even those fans, many very knowledgeable about all the principal leagues, clubs and players in Europe, have acquired at least a European “Anywhere” outlook, no matter whether they voted Leave in 2016.
Football for many is so important – so ridiculously important, some may say – that one senses that any difficulties that may arise as a result of Brexit will be resolved, or even just swept aside, and English football will remain a very European thing. After all, in anything which matters greatly to them, most people are conservatives.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.